Posted on 11/21/2003 6:43:23 AM PST by presidio9
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:50:25 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
A short while ago, I chanced to be in Dallas, Texas, making a documentary film. One of the shots involved a camera angle from a big commercial tower overlooking Dealey Plaza and the former "book depository," and it was later necessary for us to take the road through the celebrated underpass. The crew I worked with was younger than I am (you may as well make that much younger) and consisted of a Chinese-Australian, an English girl brought up in Africa, a Jewish guy from Brooklyn and other elements of a cross-section. As we passed the "Grassy Knoll," and looked up at the window, and saw the cross incised in the tarmac, I was interested by their lack of much interest. The event of Nov. 22, 1963 isn't half as real to them as the moment, say, when the planes commandeered by suicide-murderers flew into the New York skyline. Nor, as I realized, is it half as real or poignant to me as the site of Ford's Theater in Washington D.C. Time has a way of assigning value.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Don't be silly. How do you think we know it was corrupt?
Whatever am I to do with you? You are not capable of making the distinction between merely disagreeing and actually making valid points. So you waste your time and mine with a long winded "more of the same." You made no new points here. You just responded to each point and said, in effect "I disagree." But you didn't say why Larry. You never say why.
It wasn't Kennedy's war as anyone familiar with the history of American involvement in Indo-China knows full well.
Please tell us the man who came down from outer space and comitted those troops.
Anyone who remembers the civil rights passions of the time knows that this too is complete bullshit.
No comment necessary. More of the same.
A gross, and grossly unfair, characterization of the situation. Kennedy was quite lucid, brilliant, and consistant.
This is document history. It has been reported as fact by his doctors in the New York Times. Is the New York Times a credible news source my liberal friend?
More unadulterated crap. We used the Mafia in WWII and our government retained ties with them - and used them - subsequently. Nor is there any - other than partisan - evidence that Kennedy was "quick on the draw" in comparison with other leaders.
The Kennedy family's ties go back way before WW II. Where do you think their money comes from?
So what should he have done? Allowed Khrushchev to place the missiles in Cuba?
But that's exactly what he did do Larry.
Hitchens has crawled into the toilet on this one.
So you're saying that Kennedy did not wire the Oval Office then? Or is the toilet referrence the most relevant observation you can come up with?
Yes it is somewhat contradictory. But Kennedy was searching for a way out of a quagmire that the Republicans had pushed him into.
So in your revisionist world the President got bullied into war? Pretty effective Commander In Chief that one.
I could continue...but you get the idea.
Please do. This is fun.
Vietnam - Did or did not Kennedy begin the escalation of soldiers in Vietnam before his assassination. What he would have done or wouldn't have done is pure speculation. The War began under Kennedy. You can't now go back and say it didn't because Kennedy would have... no one knows.
BTW, "who did lose China." Please don't blame the Republicans for Kennedy's decision to go into Vietnam. He did that all by himself.
He thereby gave vent to a facile liberal prejudice that still sees the Galahad of Camelot as having been somehow slain by Dallas itself, or by Texas at any rate.
Well.. two things. Oswald shot Kennedy. Cities and states cannot kill. Hitchens is wrong here. Ted Kennedy was speaking of the Bush Administration and the War on Iraq. Hitchens is trying to link the assassination with Kennedy's speech. Can't be done. If Bush had been from Idaho, Kennedy would have said "in Idaho."
Drug use - I believe history supports that fact that Kennedy did use speed to help with the pain in his back. The lucid and brilliant part is up to individuals. You think he was brilliant... I think he's been overhyped.
Mafia argument... Well, there you go again! LOL! My mom be asking you right now, "If Suzie jumped off a building, would you?"
Nuclear war - I believe Hitchens' point was that Kennedy let it get that far because he refused to confront the Soviets. If he had been more forceful, the Russians might not have thought the US was so wimpy.
Bugging the office? Kennedy did bug his office. No toilet crawling. Simple truth.
Cuba...back to the "they did it too" argument. You are not debating from strong ground.
Au contraire. The US lodged plenty of official protests, including ensuring that we still retained access to the Russian sector. Kennedy's speech in Berlin was nothing short of a triumph.
Two thousand years ago--[Kennedy is interrupted by applause.] --Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum!" Today in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner!" [Crowd roars.]
There are many people in the world who really don't understand--or say they don't--what is the greatest issue between the free world and Communist world. Let them come to Berlin! [Applause.]
There are some who say that "communism is the wave of the future." Let them come to Berlin! [Applause.] And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere, "we can work with the Communists." Let them come to Berlin! [Applause and cheers.]
And there are even a few who say "yes, that it's true, that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress." Lass' sie nach Berlin en kommen! Let them come to Berlin! [Great applause and roaring cheers.]
Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us! [Crowd roars, and Kennedy pauses because of difficulty speaking over the din of the crowd.]
I want to say on behalf of my countrymen who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance the story of the last eighteen years.
I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for eighteen years that still lives with the vitality and the force and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin!
While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the communist system, all the world can see, and we take no satisfaction in it. For it is an offense not only against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters and dividing a people who wished to be joined together! [Cheers and applause.]
What is true of this city is true to Germany: Real lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. [Cheers.]
In eighteen years of peace and good faith this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace with goodwill to all people. [Cheers and sustained applause.]
You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin and all your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall, to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, no man is free. When all are free, then we look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one, and this country and this great continent of Europe, in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner!" [Sustained applause, chanting and cheers.]
I was in Berlin at the Wall for Reagan's Tear Down this Wall speech, but nothing compares to JFK's. It was a beacon of hope throughout the world.
The fact that Kennedy is revered is undeniable. And it is Hitchens point. He is revered because he was and remains a media darling, not because of his effectiveness as a President.
I just love it when liberals get cerebral when cornered with the facts.
Inability to reason is the primary symptom of liberalism.
(Let me field this one for you Larry)
Why should I argue with you carton? I don't agree with what you are saying, therefor you "can't reason."
Man... there goes my day.
I think he was on point from the chase to the kill.
Were you in Berlin for Kennedy's? How are you qualified to make that comparison?
Kennedy's speech was: "This sucks and it needs to change."
Reagan's was: "This sucks. Change it."
History has shown who got the desired response.
Lucky you said BTW because it is beside the point. The point is that Republicans were hollering about it continuously and that definitely affected the climate Kennedy had to work in. He did not do it all by himself.
Cities and states cannot kill
So Bush should feel equally at home in Texas and in Iran?
Hitchens is wrong here
Hitchens is wrong almost everywhere in this article.
Drug use - I believe history supports that fact that Kennedy did use speed to help with the pain in his back. The lucid and brilliant part is up to individuals. You think he was brilliant... I think he's been overhyped
I think the effects of his drug use have been overhyped. His brilliance is a matter of opinion, as you say. His lucidity and consistancy are not.
Mafia argument... Well, there you go again! LOL! My mom be asking you right now, "If Suzie jumped off a building, would you?"
A childish view of government. We used the Mafia because they were convenient and available. To paraphrase; "They may have been sons of bitches, but they were our sons of bitches".
Nuclear war - I believe Hitchens' point was that Kennedy let it get that far because he refused to confront the Soviets. If he had been more forceful, the Russians might not have thought the US was so wimpy
Hitchens partisan view. Khruschev's also. I think Kennedy triumphed.
Bugging the office? Kennedy did bug his office. No toilet crawling. Simple truth
Not simple truth. Simple-minded truth. Toilet crawling.
Cuba...back to the "they did it too" argument. You are not debating from strong ground
The government of the United States does not change its policies and committments every time a new President is elected. It's like an ocean liner; except in an emergency it takes miles to change direction.
Fine, that's all I was looking for.
but there is no denying his influence and impact around the world.
Neither I nor Hitchens ever said there was.
It's been fun. Thanks for the dialogue.
Sure go ahead and make the leap from comparing Texas to Iadaho to comparing Texas to Iran. And then feel free to call other people childish. Are you sure you were alive when Kennedy was president?
That only proves that Kennedy hired a mob of really first-rate speechwriters- all of whom went on to write books about his legacy as soon as the market for them was created by his tragic death (and yes, I do think that the assassination was a monstrous crime, and it did immeasurable damage to this country- even though I regard JFK the man as not much better than Billy Clinton, the scourge of fat slut interns." .
He held the highest office in the world, and was brought down by one loner nutjob with a cheap piece of crap mailorder rifle (if we are to believe the official atory- the alternatives are even worse for our faith in our Government).
I personally think that this would be a different (and much better) country had he lived, and simply been defeated in the 1964 election.
"You have a problem."
This man had a marvelously wry sense of humor so I asked him what my problem was, expecting any sort of answer except the one I got.
"I want to retire, and I want to do it now - I don't want anyone to know."
I told him that was quite a request but I got on the phone to personnel and they said they could process him out within a few hours though they weren't very pleased.
When I asked him why he didn't want anybody to "know", he said:
"While you're here you're a Horse's Ass, when you leave, you're a Hero, I don't want anybody lying."
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